What if the only thing standing in the way of your future was a dreadful mistake from your past?

Tash is back in Doncaster from the Big Smoke, leaving a broken marriage behind her. Her parents killed in a tragic accident, she’s left rudderless and alone. So when sexy features writer Tim arrives back on the scene, she’s sorely tempted. But what if journalist Ed, rootless and troubled, is The One?

Ed’s been enjoying the expat high life, but now he’s back in Doncaster. Haunted by the past he’s never quite been able to leave behind ? his brother disappeared at the height of the miner’s strike never to reappear ? it’s even harder now that he’s surrounded by painful reminders. If the only way to lay his brother to rest is to find out what really happened all those years ago, who better to help than sexy librarian Tash?

Who Do You Think You Are?
Claire Moss

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2013

Copyright © Claire Moss 2013

Claire Moss asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © June 2013 ISBN: 9781472054821

Version date: 2018-07-23

CLAIRE MOSS

was born in Darlington, north-east England, in 1977.

She has worked with books and the written word all her adult life as a bookseller, librarian and novelist. Having always been an avid reader of popular fiction, she struggled to find women’s fiction set in the north and containing characters concerned with issues other than beauty and credit cards. Eventually she decided she would have to write it herself.

Who Do You Think You Are? is her second such novel. Set in modern-day South Yorkshire and harking back to a secret from the time of the mid-1980s miners’ strike, it is a fresh and witty love story with a gritty contemporary edge.

Claire Moss is married and lives in North Yorkshire with her husband and two young children.

For Kieran and Laura

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Endpages

About the Publisher

Doncaster – May 2005

Chapter 1 Ed

‘Have you always been a librarian?’ I asked her.

Her eyes narrowed but she was smiling. The smile sent a warm rush through my stomach but the narrowed eyes scared me slightly.

‘Well,’ she said slowly, still smiling, ‘I wasn’t born a librarian, if that’s what you mean.’

I smiled too. ‘What, you mean you didn’t come out of the womb with a finger to your lips, telling the midwives to “ssshh”?’

She rolled her eyes and tried to look annoyed. ‘No. And I didn’t have a pair of half-moon glasses round my neck or my hair in a bun either.’

‘I must confess,’ I said, leaning on the desk, which, incidentally, meant I was leaning closer to her, ‘the dark-rimmed glasses are there so you’ve ticked that box but – ’ I shrugged, ‘ – your hair is disappointingly stylish.’ Was I flirting with the librarian? I never flirted with anyone. Or if I did, I didn’t realise I was doing it until it was too late.

She ran a hand over her cropped, dyed-red hair; her cheeks flushing slightly. I appeared to be the only person in the room other than her – possibly the only person in the building other than her – who was under forty and in possession of a full complement of teeth. If flirting was unusual in this kind of situation for me, it must be pretty much unheard of for her. She rallied pretty quickly though.

‘Oh yeah,’ she said, leaning back in her chair. ‘You only get your bun when you become chartered.’

I laughed. ‘You can get chartered? What like, “I’m a chartered librarian”? Like a chartered accountant?’

She pulled the kind of face girls at school used to pull when they’d hit you with a ruler but you were still the one who got bollocked by the teacher. ‘Yes, like a chartered accountant. Or like a chartered – I don’t know, a chartered something else that’s a proper profession. It is a proper profession, you know. Why, what do you do?’

‘What do you do that’s so clever?’ was obviously what she wanted to say, but at the last minute she seemed to pull back. Maybe she had suddenly become aware that we were two strangers conducting a conversation in Doncaster Local Studies Library and that the over-familiar piss-taking had already crossed the line into inappropriate. And, more to the point, that she was at work and that I was a customer.

‘I’m a journalist.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Right. Are you researching an article?’

‘Something like that.’ Time, it would seem, to talk shop. I opened my bag and pulled out the cuttings folder. ‘I’m thinking of doing a piece on this guy,’ I said, handing it to her. ‘He disappeared twenty years ago. Thought I might do a follow-up or something.’

She opened the file and spread the contents across her desk. ‘Peter Milton,’ she said slowly, reading from the headlines.

‘Pete,’ I corrected, before I could stop myself. ‘Or Peter. Whatever.’

She looked back down at the headline on one of the pieces of paper: SECOND YOUNG MINER REPORTED MISSING. ‘I think I remember this happening. During the strike?’

I nodded. Even a quarter of a century later, even for a younger generation who had been kids at the time, it was still just ‘the strike’. It was like how 1939-1945 was just ‘the war’ to our grandparents.

‘So – ’ She was still skim-reading the three cuttings I’d given her as she was speaking. ‘So, what exactly are you looking for?’

‘I – well, I don’t know really. What sort of stuff might you have? Obviously I’ve already done all the easy stuff myself – you know, Google, online news sites, that sort of thing. I just wondered if you’d have anything else on him?’

She narrowed her eyes at me again, but this time there was no smile. ‘Well, I could just go and get the Peter Milton file and we could have a look through it together.’

For a heart-stopping second I thought she was serious, that the Pete Milton file might really exist and that all the answers might be in it. ‘Are you sarcastic to all your customers?’ I asked her.

She raised her eyebrows and purposefully didn’t smile again. ‘Only the ones I like.’ The librarian was flirting with me now, I was sure of it.

‘I want to know,’ I continued, trying to remind myself why I had come here in the first place, ‘whether you might have any more information on him.’

‘Just him? Not this other lad who went missing as well?’ She pointed to the second paragraph of the article. ‘Lee Hague?’

‘No, I – erm…’ I failed to come up with a convincing reason why I might care more about Pete Milton than Lee Hague, so I let my voice trail off. ‘No, just Peter Milton.’

‘OK.’ She nodded. ‘OK then. So – you mean you want to know what happened to him after the disappearance? Do you know if he was ever found?’

‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘No, that’s not what I meant. He was never – I mean, he hasn’t been found yet. What I want to know is, is there any more information on what he was doing before he disappeared? It’s too long ago for Google or any of the news sites to have stuff like that. And I was kind of hoping for – well, you know, something that everyone else might have missed.’ I gave an apologetic half-laugh.

She frowned and stuck out her bottom lip. She looked like the kind of woman who might have had her lip pierced at some point in her life, but it wasn’t pierced now. ‘The only stuff we’d really have is births, marriages, deaths, census records, that kind of thing. Probably wouldn’t tell you much new. Or,’ she gestured towards the ‘Staff Only’ door behind her, ‘we’ve got some old Coal Board files in the archive. I think there could be personnel records in among those, if you think they might be of any use? Most of it’s pretty boring though – anything really juicy would still be embargoed.’

‘Right,’ I said, trying to mask my enthusiasm. ‘And you’d have all the old newspapers and news databases, that kind of thing?’

‘Well, yeah, we have the locals on microfilm, the ones that haven’t been digitised.’ She pointed to the far end of the room where a middle-aged woman was hunched over a tall, grey machine that looked as though it should have been obsolete twenty years ago. ‘And obviously you can do a search on the online databases if I give you the passwords,’ she nodded towards a bank of computers by the window. ‘But don’t you have access to that kind of thing at your paper?’

My paper? ‘Oh, right, no, I’m – erm, I’m freelance these days.’

She looked at her watch. It was small and understated with a slim brown leather strap, looking out of place against her grown-up-punk clothes. ‘Well, how long have you got today? I’m not really supposed to, but if you like I could search some stuff out for you this afternoon and you can come back and look at it at your leisure.’ She smiled wryly. ‘It makes a nice change from dealing with all the family history nutters that normally come in here bothering me.’

‘Oh, OK.’ If only you knew.

‘So…’ She opened a big desk diary and looked at me expectantly. ‘Do you want to make an appointment to come back so I can be sure everything’s ready for you?’ When I hesitated for a second or two she leaned back in the chair and spread her hands. ‘Come on, don’t leave me hanging. When am I going to get to see you again?’

She was flirting with me. And for once I’d picked up on it in time.

‘Or,’ I said, in what I hoped was an alluringly languid manner, ‘you could meet me for a drink on Friday night and tell me what you’ve found. Then I can decide whether it’s worth coming back.’

Too far? I worried, but there was that killer smile again.

‘OK,’ she said, as though she were doing me a massive favour. ‘I finish here at seven. Why don’t you meet me outside and I’ll bring anything good I’ve found with me.’

‘OK,’ I echoed, failing to sound as cool as she had. ‘See you then.’

I headed towards the revolving doors that led out to the street.

‘Hey!’ She shouted after me. I turned round bracing myself to see if she’d really been winding me up. As if a woman like that wouldn’t have anything better to do on a Friday night. ‘My name’s Tash, Tash Chaplain, by the way!’

I raised a finger to my lips and mimed an exaggerated ‘sshhhh’ then turned to go. As I stepped onto the street, I allowed myself a little swagger in my step.

Chapter 2 Tash

It was time to leave. It had actually been time to leave for a while, but I wanted to stay. Geri didn’t seem to mind. I think she hardly noticed me any more; she just cooked and tidied and got the children ready for bed around me. ‘You’re one of the family,’ she had said to me when I first came back and I’d cried with gratitude at her pretending I still had a family. I had forgotten the other side of it though, that a family is just a group of people who have carte blanche to ignore you and take you for granted.

‘Pass me that nappy, Tash,’ she said, as I was getting up the nerve to tell her.

‘Here,’ I said, picking up the one lying nearest to me on the floor.

‘No,’ she shook her head, irritated. ‘That’s one of Katie’s. I need one for Sophie.’

I hunted round for a smaller nappy, glad to have my back to her. ‘So, anyway,’ I said, ‘I don’t think I’ll be round tomorrow night after all.’

Her hand shot out to grab Katie as she made a naked dash for the stairs but, still wet from her bath, the little girl slipped past her. ‘What?’ Geri said, distracted. ‘Why not?’

‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ I said truthfully. ‘You must be sick to death of having me round here every night, eating your food, drinking your wine, winding up your kids.’

‘Tash, we love having you, I mean it. We wish you’d stay here, honestly. We hate to think of you in that big house on your own every night.’ She grabbed a handful of baby wipes in readiness. ‘And anyway, you never eat the food, and you always bring the wine.’

I laughed. ‘Well, it’s good of you to say so, but I know you and Matt will be glad of some time together.’

She rolled her eyes as she lifted the baby’s bottom and shoved the nappy under her. ‘Tash, we’re constantly together. That’s why we’re so glad you’re here to give us someone else to talk to and about.’ She didn’t seem to be joking. ‘So anyway,’ she picked Sophie up and handed her to me. I cuddled the tiny warm bundle into me, stroking her chubby neck. ‘Why aren’t you coming tomorrow?’

‘I’m – well, I’m meeting someone. A bloke.’

‘A bloke?’ It was Matt, carrying Katie over his shoulder like a sack of coal. She wasn’t laughing or wriggling, just hanging floppily as though this was how her dad put her to bed every night. From what I’d observed over the preceding weeks, this was in fact the case. ‘What bloke?’

I shot Geri an urgent look. Matt was a good guy, and after these last few months of hanging around his house every evening, talking to his wife for hour after hour while he dozed, mouth open, on the couch, I had begun to regard him as my friend. But I still didn’t want to tell him these things. I knew he must know about me and Stephen and Tim and the whole hideous mess because I’m certain Geri tells him everything, no matter how much she promises me that she won’t. But I wanted to at least be able to pretend to him – to anyone – that I was a good person.

‘Matt, mind your own business,’ Geri said, leaning forward to kiss Katie on the cheek.

‘Night, Mummy!’ she yelled.

‘Night, Katie!’ Geri yelled back.

‘Don’t worry, Tash,’ Matt said over his shoulder as he carried Katie out of the room. ‘She’ll tell me it all later anyway.’

Geri stood up and took Sophie back over to the armchair. She lifted up her top and moved the baby to her breast, saying, ‘Well? What bloke?’

‘Just someone I met at work.’

‘One of the other librarians?’

‘No,’ I shook my head. ‘A customer. He came in the library the other day and asked me to help him with some research he’s doing.’

‘What?’ Sophie’s head jerked away at the sound of her mother’s shriek, leaving Geri’s white, veiny boob staring me in the face.

‘What do you mean, “what”?’

‘You’re going out with some bloke who came in the Local Studies Library? On his own? During the day?’

I pulled a ‘fuck off’ face. ‘He’s a journalist actually, not one of the family history weirdos. He’s working on a story about a local cold case or something. Sounds pretty interesting.’

Sophie was sucking away at the boob again. ‘A journalist? Tash, are you sure?’

I knew what she was asking. Not if I was sure this bloke was really a journalist but if I was sure I should talk to a journalist ever again.

‘He’s not a Stephen kind of journalist, don’t worry.’

‘So is he the other kind of journalist?’

I felt that tight grip in my stomach that came every time anyone mentioned him. Even though Geri hadn’t used Tim’s name, I knew that was what she meant. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not that kind either.’ Nobody was a Tim kind of anything.

‘So, did he just ask you out?’ She sounded incredulous.

‘No, not like that. It’s not a date or anything. He just wanted to talk about this research in a bit more depth, and we’d been having a bit of a laugh, and, you know…’

‘Tash, shut up. I’m thirty-three years old, I’ve had two children, I’ve slept with fourteen men. I understand how these things work as well as you do. People don’t – men don’t ask women they meet in the course of their boring research on dead people to go out for a drink with them unless they want to get into their knickers. You might not think it’s a date, but I reckon he will do. God, I’m so jealous.’ She stood to put Sophie in her cot.

‘Geri!’

She held a finger to her lips as we crept out of the room.

‘No,’ she whispered, ‘not like that. I mean, I’ve just never been on a date. When I met Matt we’d slept together about fifteen times before we even went to the cinema together. It would never have occurred to me to go out romantically with someone I hadn’t already had sex with – it’s what people do in films or stupid books about New York.’

‘Well, there’s nothing to be jealous about,’ I said coolly, ‘because it isn’t a date!’

Geri said nothing in response, but the look on her face told me what was going on in her head. In her head she was holding up her thumbs and forefingers in front of her forehead to form a massive W and she was saying ‘whatever’ in an annoying, squeaky voice.

We went into the lounge and Geri poured me a glass of red wine without asking. ‘So anyway,’ she said as I sat down, ‘what’s he like?’

‘Erm – our age or thereabouts, I would have said. Maybe a bit older, but he’s still got all his hair. Quite tall.’

‘Taller than you?’ she put in anxiously.

‘Of course,’ I said quickly, then felt annoyed with myself for playing into Geri’s hands. She was asking about height because tallness and the lack of it had always been a central part of my decision-making process when it comes to men. I’m 5’9” and ever since I reached my full height at age fifteen had had a strict rule that anyone shorter than me was not an option. Until Stephen. I had somehow allowed Stephen to slip through, which just goes to show that rules are there for a reason.

‘And, what? Dark? Fair?’

‘Kind of – kind of sandy, I suppose?’

Geri smirked. ‘Come off it, Tash. We all know what “sandy” means. Do you mean ginger?’

‘No, not ginger. Sandy.’

‘What, like Robert Redford?’

I smiled. ‘Yes! Exactly! Well, maybe not exactly but – you know, not not Robert Redford.’

‘My God,’ she breathed, ‘a date with a journalist who looks like Robert Redford. Are you going to share secrets from the Nixon White House with him?’

‘Yes,’ I said solemnly. ‘I am Deep Throat.’

We laughed, then she said, ‘But seriously, Tash, do you think this is a good idea? If he is, you know, hoping that it is going to be a date. Is he a nice guy?’

I shrugged. I genuinely had very little idea. ‘He seemed like he was,’ I said, which was true.

She tossed her head dismissively. ‘Makes no difference really. If he’s not a nice guy then it’s a bad idea for you. If he is a nice guy – and if you say he is, then he probably is – then it’s a bad idea for him.’

‘Why? What do you think I’m going to do to him? We’re going to be looking at old newspaper clippings and making chit-chat about local history. I’m not going to break his heart just by spending a couple of hours in the same room as him. I know that I’m very beautiful and special to you, but unfortunately the rest of the world does not generally share your point of view.’ She continued to look at me sceptically. ‘Geri, you need to calm down about this. All I’m doing is meeting him for a drink so I can give him some information he asked for.’

‘About the Nixon White House?’

‘Yes.’

She smiled and rolled her eyes.

‘Look, I know what you’re worrying about.’ I reached over and squeezed Geri’s arm awkwardly. ‘But it’s fine. I’m not going to get involved with this guy, I’m not going to fall in love with him and he’s not going to fall in love with me. I’m not on the fucking rebound for Christ’s sake.’ I managed to sound really indignant as I said it, and Geri looked suitably sheepish.

It was entirely appropriate, after all, that somebody in my situation should be affronted by the idea they may be on the rebound. I had only split up with my husband three months ago, as she well knew. Only the most cold-hearted, loveless of people could rebound that quickly. What Geri didn’t know of course, and what I was too paralysed by shame to tell her, was that the thing I was rebounding from was far bigger than three years of marriage to Stephen. That the hurt was so much deeper than anything Stephen could ever have caused me, that what I was experiencing was not the brisk, rubbery bounce of a rebound but a screaming, echoing nosedive into a black, empty abyss. It was the kind of fall that people do not bounce back from.

There was a pained concern in Geri’s eyes as she spoke. ‘I know, I’m sorry. I know that you’re not ready for someone else – Jesus, how could you be? And I know that you’re still grieving for your mum and dad, I just – just be careful, that’s all.’

I almost laughed. This guy had not seemed like somebody I felt I needed to be careful of. He had been so interesting and kind and – well, calm. And he had been the first person I had talked to in nearly two months who didn’t know about Mum and Dad, didn’t know about Stephen or Tim, who seemed interested in me – the old me – rather than ghoulishly fascinated by what a fantastic mess my life was. I just wanted to sit in a room with him for a couple of hours and talk and listen and pretend to be normal. I just wanted a friend. A handsome, charming friend.

*

He was waiting for me at the bottom of the library steps on the Friday night. Several of the other staff were leaving at the same time as me, heads down as they pulled their phones from their handbags or buttoned up their jackets, but some of them saw me greet him and walk off with him. I felt a warm glow that they might think this man was my boyfriend or my husband, that they might assume that my life was filled with the simple pleasures of a walk home on a chilly spring night with a tall, warm man.

‘So what’s your name, mystery man?’ I asked him. He was walking close beside me, his arms swinging loosely by his sides. I could have reached out and grabbed his hand if I’d wanted to. I wrapped my arms around myself, keeping my own hands safely out of reach.

‘Ed,’ he said, smiling and meeting my eyes.

It was quite something that smile: broad and intimate and knowing and fond. The smile of an old friend you never expected to see again, who greets you by telling you that you haven’t changed a bit. It would warm the coldest of hearts, I felt sure, but of course all that was academic because my heart wasn’t simply cold but dead. The body, however, is something else altogether, and I began to feel a long-forgotten sizzle in my gut when his eyes started to twinkle. I looked away, worried that I was beginning to blush.

‘Have I ruined the mystique now?’ he asked.

‘A bit,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you ruin it a bit more and tell me where we’re going?’ We were heading away from the town centre, up South Parade. ‘I didn’t know there was anywhere up here.’

‘Neither did I until the other day. My sister took me.’ He steered me into a white building with a grey painted sign above it saying ‘Dove’. Inside was all smooth wood and dim light and art on the walls. Proper art as well, stuff that looked as if a real artist had painted it – well, either an artist or a school child using their non-dominant hand. There were a few other people sitting at tables nursing wine and real ale and Ed took a seat by the window.

‘I didn’t know places like this existed in Doncaster,’ I said lightly.

He didn’t smile. ‘It’s not all flat caps and slag heaps up here any more, you know.’

‘I know. I’m – ’ ‘I’m one of you’, I wanted to say. ‘Do you think I’m from somewhere else?’ I said instead.

‘Aren’t you?’

‘No, I’m from here, from Donny.’

He didn’t look surprised so much as disbelieving. ‘Right. Sorry, I just assumed – I mean, you don’t have the accent or – ’ he waved a hand up and down at me. ‘What I mean is, your clothes, your hair, it’s all – you do look very London.’

‘No!’ I was genuinely wounded. ‘I’m not London, not at all. Well, OK, you’re right, I do live in London – did live there – but I haven’t turned traitor. I’m still a Yorkshire lass really.’

He smiled. If it wasn’t too familiar-sounding I would say he was looking at me fondly. The fizzing started up again and I quickly dropped my gaze. ‘If you say so,’ he said. ‘Don’t remember meeting many like you when I was growing up though.’

‘See? I wouldn’t have guessed you were a native either. You don’t look like a typical Donny bloke to me.’

‘What do I look like?’

Like an overgrown student circa 1994, I wanted to say. And also a bit like Robert Redford. ‘Like a man of the world,’ I said instead.

That indulgent smile again. ‘I’d say you were a pretty good judge of character.’

‘Hmm.’ I made a non-committal noise. Judgement of character was not something I generally performed well at as my track record would indicate.

We ordered drinks and I pulled an envelope from my bag. ‘This is what I’ve managed to find on your Peter Milton.’ I passed a few copies of newspaper articles across to him. ‘It’s not much, I’m afraid, just a few profile pieces done after he disappeared, which you’ve probably seen already. The only thing I found from before was him doing a sound bite from the picket line – there, you see?’ I pointed at the smallest cutting.

‘“Violence only dilutes our message,”‘ Ed read aloud. ‘“If we want to be heard, we have to take ourselves seriously as well.”‘ He nodded, his lips pressed together. ‘That’s quite eloquent.’ He sounded surprised, I noted smugly. Maybe I wasn’t the only one with snobbish preconceptions of Yorkshiremen.

I nodded. ‘There was this as well.’ I leafed through to find the print-out I was after. ‘From twenty years after he disappeared – the Free Press did a follow-up story. Turns out his family has never asked for him to be declared dead and no evidence ever turned up to suggest he is – no body’s been found that fits his description, nothing like that – so I suppose, technically, he’s still a missing person. I think they still live locally.’ I looked down at the piece of paper. ‘Bev Milton, it says here – that’s his mother. You should see if she’ll agree to an interview.’

He took the paper from me, barely glancing at it. ‘She’s dead,’ he said absently. ‘At least,’ he added, ‘I think I heard she’d died.’ He scratched his chin, not looking at me. ‘Anything else?’ he asked. ‘Anything that’s, you know, not in the public domain as such.’

‘Everything I can give you is in the public domain,’ I said coldly, ‘otherwise I wouldn’t be able to give it to you.’ I knew what he meant. He meant, did you find anything that I couldn’t have found by myself given an internet connection and twenty minutes with the newspaper archive?

‘There’s these,’ I said, pulling more sheaves of paper, ‘if this is the kind of thing you mean. Personnel files from Oldfield Main.’

He took them from me and squinted, trying to read the poor reproduction in the artfully dim light. I hesitated. Was it worth even giving it to him? I shook the last few papers out of the envelope. ‘There was this as well.’ I handed them to him. ‘It’s a personnel file from a different pit, Edgarsbridge over in Rotherham. It’s another Peter Milton. I’m fairly sure it’s another one anyway, the date of birth’s different. I just thought there was something a bit funny about it. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly but whoever it is, he only worked there from October 1984 for about six months.’

His eyes widened. ‘During the strike.’

I nodded.

‘A scab?’ He sounded as though he had heard of such people only in legend.

I shrugged. ‘Must have been. Look, like I said, it’s probably nothing to do with your Peter Milton. According to all this stuff he was a good union bloke, always on the picket lines, well thought of. And anyway, he was only twenty, not married, no kids. I mean, I know times were tough for all of them, but if he didn’t have to worry about putting a roof over his family’s head, then – ’ I shrugged. ‘Seems as if he would have had a hard time justifying it to himself. Or anyone else.’ Ed was looking at me, his eyes slightly smaller than before, and he looked as though he wished I’d stop rambling on about this nonsense and let him do the detective work. I shrugged again, trying to signal that this line of reasoning was at an end. ‘Plus,’ I said, ‘the date of birth’s different, like I said. Chuck that bit out if you want.’

‘No, no,’ he took it from me. ‘It all helps. This is great, thanks, Tash.’ He was trying to make up for his faux pas earlier, I could tell, so I smiled.

‘Just doing my job.’

A waiter brought our drinks and I took the opportunity to break the tension with a change of subject. ‘So, man of the world, have you lived in Doncaster all your life?’

He smiled. ‘I was born here, lived here ‘til I was eighteen, but you were right about the man of the world thing – I’ve lived abroad for the last ten years or so.’

‘Ah, hence the tan.’

He touched his face self-consciously. ‘Hardly a tan. More like all my freckles have finally merged into one.’

‘So, where abroad?’

‘Most recently, Dubai. I worked on an ex-pat paper there.’ He shook his head. ‘A rag, an absolute rag. Full of gossip and so-called profiles of people bragging about how opulent their homes were. The paper’s gone tits up now, along with everything else over there. Seemed like a good time for a visit home. Plus, you know, I had some family stuff to sort out.’

I nodded. I bet it’s a woman, I thought. He’s just split up with someone and he’s nursing a broken heart. And then it occurred to me that this might be no bad thing. He wouldn’t want to get involved with me, which would stop me from getting involved with him.

‘So, what about you?’ Ed said. ‘You said you live in London? Bit of a commute, isn’t it, to Donny Local Studies Library every day?’

I sniffed a laugh. ‘I’ve been in London for fifteen years, I can’t suddenly stop thinking of it as where I live. I’ve come back up here for a while, and the job in Local Studies came up, so…’

‘And what brought you back here then, after all this time?’ He had that journalistic tone, probing but friendly, trying to get past banalities to the heart of the matter.

I took a large slug of wine. I could have taken my lead from him and put it all under the generic heading of ‘family stuff’, but I realised I wanted to tell him the truth. I hadn’t had to tell anyone yet, not anyone who hadn’t known me before.

‘I split up with my husband, then three days later both my parents were killed in a car accident.’

He put his drink down and reached over to grasp my hand. It was an instinctive gesture, a reaching out, and I felt absurdly grateful for it. His hand was warm, much warmer than mine. He opened his mouth, but for a second there were no words. Then he said, very quietly. ‘Oh, Jesus. Tash. I’m so sorry. What happened? With your parents I mean, not – not your husband.’

I half-laughed. ‘I’ll tell you that too if you want.’ I’ll tell you it all, then you can really decide if I’m worth it. ‘Mum and Dad were – they’d been over to Lincoln for the morning and on the way back – ’ I took a steadying breath. I could tell the story if I just ploughed on, didn’t stop to think about what I was saying. ‘Well, there was some bloke in an Audi and he was on his phone – ’ I saw Ed wince. ‘I know, so fucking predictable isn’t it? And anyway, he came round a bend too fast – the police reckon he was doing at least seventy-five – and there was a girl on a horse in front of him. He didn’t have time to slow down so he swerved onto the other side of the road, and that was – ’ I swallowed. ‘That was them, coming the other way. The impact sent them skidding into the horse, and it crushed the car. And them.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said again. ‘Oh Jesus. Tash, how do you – how do you carry on?’

It was what everybody wanted to ask but nobody did. I think he had spoken without thinking, had blurted the thing that was at the front of his mind, and his face looked as though he wanted to take it back. I smiled and shrugged, trying to show him that it was OK that he’d asked me. ‘Oh, you know,’ I said, ‘it’s like everyone says: one day at a time.’

I wanted to tell him that I didn’t carry on, not really. That this wasn’t really me, sitting here, drinking wine, chatting. This was just the pieces all moving together in the semblance of a person. ‘If only you’d known me before,’ I wanted to say, and I didn’t just mean before Mum and Dad, I meant before Stephen – before Tim even. If you’d known me back then, then this could really have been something.

He nodded. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said again. It’s what everyone says, and it’s nice that they say it, but I usually assume they mean that they’re sorry that person has died, they’re sorry that they’re gone, and the sorrow is partly for themselves, for them missing them. Ed had never known Mum and Dad, he only knew me, and even then only barely. He meant he was sorry for me, that this had happened to me.

His warm hand was still on mine. I moved mine above his and squeezed it. ‘Thank you. He’s going to prison, the guy who did it. Not the first time he’d done something like this, apparently. First time he’d killed anyone though.’

‘He was OK then?’

I nodded. ‘Broken collar bone, whiplash, cuts and bruises. He was hanging upside down in his seat when the police got there; his phone was still in his hand.’ I paused to steady myself. I could hear my breath becoming shaky. ‘It always makes me think of a vampire bat.’ I laughed and he didn’t.

‘And what about the girl? And the horse?’

‘The horse had to be shot – or whatever they do to knackered horses now. It survived but it was never going to recover. The girl’s OK though. Her name’s Chloe, I went to see her in the hospital. She’s got a broken arm, a broken leg and a broken pelvis, but she didn’t have any head injuries: she got thrown into the verge, away from the horse and the cars. They say she’ll be fine eventually. Well, as fine as a twelve-year-old girl can be who’s seen two people and her horse die.’

He shook his head. ‘So, when was this?’

I hesitated a moment. ‘Three months ago. Three months tomorrow.’ I nodded. ‘Right, three months tomorrow. I’d almost forgotten it was coming up.’ Every day is an anniversary – the fourth day, the fortieth day, the fifth Saturday. Three months shouldn’t have been any worse, but it was. Three months is a quarter of a year.

‘Sorry,’ he said. Apparently he didn’t need me to explain. ‘You know, I’ve lost both my parents too.’ I felt my face brighten, much as I tried to stop it. Another orphan! Maybe he would understand. Maybe he’d tell me what to do, how to get through it. Maybe he’d tell me that it was all OK in the end, that eventually I, and the rest of my life, would go back to normal, to the way things used to be. ‘Not like you did,’ he went on. ‘Not so horrific. My dad had a heart problem nobody knew about. He dropped dead one day at work when I was seven.’

I bit my lip, not knowing what to say. ‘Sorry’ seemed so redundant.

‘I can still remember him,’ Ed continued. ‘You know, his voice, what he looked like, what he smelled like, everything. I’m the youngest, so I think it was easier for me in some ways. You know, I was young enough to – I don’t know how to describe it.’ He squeezed his eyes shut. His face was grave, but not upset. There was no sign of any emotion. He opened his eyes. They were, I realised, very, very blue. ‘I think, if it doesn’t sound too simplistic, that I took it in my stride.’

Would that have been better? I wondered. To have lost them then, when the self-absorption and idiocy of childhood might have made it more bearable? No. I shuddered at the thought. Better to have had them for as long as I did.

‘And your mother?’ I knew I shouldn’t ask, that it was distasteful and intrusive, especially on a first date – if indeed that’s what this was – but I had to know.

He screwed his face up, as if in acknowledgement of the unsavoury nature of this conversation. ‘That was more recent,’ he admitted. ‘Just last year. Cancer.’

‘I’m sorry.’ It seemed appropriate to say it, this time, about something that must still be fresh and painful.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s OK. Really.’ He sounded surprised. ‘It’s quite a lot better now, a lot better than it was, at least.’ He was still holding my hand and he gave it a brief squeeze. ‘I know it won’t seem like it now, I know you won’t believe me, but it does start to get better.’

I smiled. Other people had told me much the same, but I’d never believed them. What could they possibly know? But I knew that he must be telling the truth, because he was actually living it.

‘It never goes back,’ he continued. ‘Not to how things were before, but it gets a bit better, honestly.’

I tried to stop the disappointment from showing in my face. I mean, obviously I would never go back to normal. How could I? But it made me feel even more hollow, having it confirmed like that. Tears – small ones, but tears nevertheless – sprang into my eyes. I blinked slowly, praying that they wouldn’t spill onto my face, and that he wouldn’t notice them even if they did. They did. And he did.

‘Oh, Jesus, Tash, I’m sorry.’ He put his other hand on top of mine. ‘I didn’t mean to – ’ He sighed. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Stop saying that.’ I tried to lighten the tone, pulling my hand away to brush my cheeks dry. ‘It’s fine. I cry all the time. And anyway, I like talking to you about it.’

He smiled. ‘I know what you’re going to say. That I’m a good listener?’

I grinned. ‘Something like that.’

‘Women always say that. I think they just mean that I let them talk for as long as they want.’

That was the thing, I realised, about him. He did have all the elements of your everyday ladykiller: artful scruffiness; the appearance of not caring how he looked, while ensuring that he was neither unfashionable nor unsavoury; the effortless flirting; the languid charm; the ‘good listener’ approach – I hoped there was nothing calculated about it. The charm and charisma appeared effortless because they were.

At the end of the evening, he thanked me again for the information I had brought and helped me on with my best coat. I almost asked him if he wanted to come back to Mum and Dad’s with me. It seemed like he would have said yes. I suspected it would not be anything out of the ordinary for him to go home with a woman he had just met. And I also suspected that he was the kind of man who would be good in bed and not a bastard, and for a moment the temptation was almost overwhelming. The thought of another warm body in that house with me, of somebody touching me and taking me away from myself for an hour or so was intoxicating.

But I bade him goodbye warmly and with promise, but without invitation. Tim, I kept telling myself. It isn’t over with Tim. Don’t bugger it up with comfort sex with a stranger, even if he is a Carl Bernstein lookalike. Or Bob Woodford. Whichever one was the good-looking one. But now I think maybe that really, on another, deeper level that I wouldn’t allow myself to acknowledge that I was really saying: Save this one, don’t rush it. He’s worth the wait. Stick it out until the time’s right.

Chapter 3 Ed

‘Ed, remind me again what your fucking problem is?’

My sister Leanne was bollocking me for something. There was nothing novel so I was giving it only about a third of my attention.

‘What do you mean?’ I said, my eyes and most of my mind focusing on the cuttings and personnel files Tash had brought me from the library.

‘I mean, what is this fucking obsession you have about our Pete? He’s gone. He’s gone.’ She shouted the last word. ‘He’s been gone twenty years. Reading old newspaper articles or whatever the bloody hell that is, it’s not going to bring him back, you know.’

I took a heavy breath and put the papers down. This was a conversation we had had many times, although not usually in such a heated manner. ‘You talk like he’s dead,’ I said.

She stuck out her lower jaw. ‘And what? You think he int?’

I shook my head. ‘We’re not getting into all this again.’

‘We fucking are. I’m sick of listening to your bullshit.’

Leanne is not an even-tempered woman, and is very sure of her opinions – and vociferous in her defence of them. But usually, even in her darkest moods, she retains some veneer of civility towards me and other members of the family. Anyone outside the family though, is shown no mercy.

‘Leanne! It’s not bullshit, I’m just – ’

‘What?’ she cut in. ‘You seriously think he could still be alive? After all this time?’

I shrugged. Of course I did. ‘They’ve never found a body.’

‘Means nothing,’ she spat. ‘They’ve not found him alive either, have they?’

‘Nobody’s been looking! Not for years, not since the police said they’d hit a dead end and they were – whatever they called it – “shelving” the case. I just think somebody should still be looking, that’s all.’

She stared at me for several moments. It was clear she thought I was an imbecile. ‘Edward, think about it. Please, think about it. I thought you were supposed to be the brainy one. He’s been gone for twenty years! Someone who leaves and doesn’t come back for that long is either dead – ’ She nodded as she said the word ‘dead’, as though that made it true. ‘Or he doesn’t want to be found.’ That was something else that Leanne had pointed out – to me, or Mum, or to our other sister Lisa – many times over the years. I couldn’t or wouldn’t accept it. My big brother may have left me – left us – but there was no way that he didn’t want to come back. He was out there somewhere and something, or someone, must be stopping him from being with his family. It was my job to try and find out who or what that was.

I didn’t answer, and Leanne shook her head again. ‘You’re as bad as Mum. You need to let it go. That’s what killed her in the end. She couldn’t let it go and eventually it just ate her up.’

‘He was her son! What was she supposed to do, just forget about him?’

Leanne’s face was grim and her voice was strained. ‘I know he was her son. But I’m her daughter. And so’s Lisa. And you’re her son too. She should never have, I don’t know, given up like she did. She should have kept going for us as well as herself.’

‘Leanne,’ I said, trying to keep my voice calmer. ‘She had cancer. That was what killed her, not worrying about Pete, not “giving up”. She could have “let him go”, as you put it, years ago, she’d still have died. I know you’re pissed off with her for dying – ’

‘I am!’ she was shouting again, her pale, freckled face growing red. ‘Too fucking right I am! She were only sixty-five. Who dies at that age?’ She stood up and threw the magazine she’d been holding down to the floor. ‘People who can’t be arsed to keep going, that’s who! And it were ‘cos of him, the selfish little fucker.’

‘Leanne, calm down! Look, it’s hard for all of us; we’re all still upset, we’re all angry. It’s natural to feel like this. But you’ve got to understand, it wasn’t Pete’s fault. And I think, well, I think if Mum were here now, she’d have wanted me to look for him. She’d have wanted to know what happened – she’d have wanted us all to know.’

Leanne swallowed and sat back down. ‘What do you think you’re going to find out? That there was some conspiracy in the National Union of Mineworkers to get rid of him and that he’s inside one of them concrete pillars on the Tinsley Viaduct? Or that Thatcher took a contract out on his head and he’s in hiding in Argentina or somewhere? He was just some bloke. Whatever happened to him, however it happened – I mean, I don’t know any more than you do – but, Ed, you know I’m right. He’s not coming back, I’m sure of it. He’d have done it by now if he was going to, he’d have found us. It’s what I always told Mum, it’s what I always used to say.’ Her right leg was jiggling up and down rapidly. ‘I wanted to get him declared dead. I tried to persuade her to look into it. I’m sure we could have done it – there were never any sightings of him, not that we heard about at least. He never touched his bank account either.’ She laughed drily. ‘Not that there were owt in it anyway.’ She sighed. ‘But Mum wouldn’t have it. ‘

We were quiet a few moments. ‘I’m not going to stop looking,’ I said eventually.

‘Are you hoping for some sort of scoop?’ I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, you know, say you did find him – dead or alive, in the Tinsley Viaduct or in Argentina – it’d be a pretty good exclusive for you, wouldn’t it? Reckon some of the national papers might publish it.’

I sucked my teeth. Joking or not, I felt like hitting her. How old did you have to be, I wondered, before your first reaction during an argument with your sister stopped being to give her a dead leg? ‘Leanne, I’m not doing this for my career, I’m doing it because – ’

She shook her head. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I know why you’re doing it.’ She bit her lip. ‘I think really it’s been worse for you than it were for me or our Lisa. We can remember him better – we knew him, properly knew him. You were nobbut a kid yourself and he were a grown man. You’ve built him up in your head to be this hero – especially with Dad being gone and all. But he weren’t. He were an ordinary lad: went to work, went out on a Friday night with his mates, gave girls the run-around. He were nowt special. Well, I mean, he were, of course he were, and he were our brother. But – ’ she spread her hands ‘ – he’s gone. I got used to that idea years ago, and I think you should too.’

*

I went back to the library two days later. Tash was at her desk, the same as before, her eyes fixed on her computer screen. I waited a second before going over to her, assessing the impact of seeing her again. I’m not very good with women. A problem compounded by the fact that I give every appearance of being good with women. I’m good with people. I make my living from being good with people. My solid working-class background followed by a career surrounded by middle-class media types has endowed upon me an ability to get along with anyone who crosses my path; to ask the right questions, give the right responses, make the person I’m talking to feel special. So when I’m talking to a woman I’m not interested in, or am only half-interested in, it’s pretty easy for her to start to feel special too. The trouble comes when I have to talk to a woman I like, or who I think I might start to like – and I was beginning to suspect that Tash might be falling into that category.

What had begun as straightforward attraction – coupled with the loneliness of washing up twenty years too late in the town I had left when I was still a boy – was, after taking her out the other night, starting to turn into something deeper. I had found myself thinking about her when she wasn’t there, found myself gripped at odd moments by grief for her family who I had never known, spent long minutes trying to picture her ex-husband, trying to imagine who he could be to have abandoned her at such a time. So that now, seeing her again after having had a few days to build her up in my head, I was able to start acting as I always do when confronted with someone who is managing to get under my skin: like a charmless half-wit who did an online course in the art of seduction and got a B+.

I was on full alert for any signal that she might have devoted similar amounts of mental energy to me in the intervening few days. The enigmatic quality she had was one of the things I liked so much, but it did leave a man hanging somewhat. We’d had a good time the other night, and I was sure I’d picked up enough of a vibe to believe she liked me – or at least that she wasn’t actively repelled by me. But there had been nothing when she said goodbye, no hint of even wanting to meet again. Maybe, having been through so much so recently, all she wanted was to steer clear of men altogether. Now I began to worry that by turning up again so soon I was doing the thing guaranteed to scare her away. Too late now, I thought. The only thing worse than turning up again too soon would be turning up too soon, muttering to myself in the doorway of the library, then turning on my heels and disappearing again.

She looked up as I strode towards her and spontaneously broke into a broad grin. ‘Hi! What a welcome surprise.’

‘Well, that’s always nice to hear. I’m not interrupting am I?’

‘You are interrupting, but you’re interrupting me watching cricket on the internet.’

‘Oh, right. What match is it?’ I have no interest in any sport but was willing to feign one now.

‘England and South Africa, one day international.’

‘What’s the score?’

‘England are batting, 226 for 3.’

I nodded. Good or bad? I wasn’t sure so I kept my face neutral. A Yorkshireman who didn’t get cricket was beyond shameful.

She clicked a button and sat back in her chair and looked up at me. ‘I haven’t got a clue what any of that means, by the way. My dad was into cricket and I never could be bothered to find out about it when he was alive. I thought I’d give it a go now but – ’ she shrugged ‘ – I have absolutely no idea what’s going on. Why do they keep hitting the ball and then just standing there and not running? No wonder they’re all fat.’

I laughed. Thank God. A girlfriend who knew more about sport than I did would be far too demeaning. Not that she was going to be my girlfriend of course.

‘Well, maybe I’ve got something else for you to concentrate on instead.’

‘Oh no, you haven’t brought me work have you? And I thought you just wanted an excuse to see me again.’

‘Well, that too, I mean, of course, you know…’ I stuttered to a halt.

‘What have you got for me then?’ She obviously felt sorry for me and was willing to gloss over my ham-fisted attempts at charisma.

‘Would you be able to tell me any more about Edgarsbridge pit? Just a bit of info on, I don’t know, productivity, particularly during the strike, how many were employed there, how many were working during the strike. Any photos, any reportage – anything really. ‘

‘You think we were onto something with that “other” Peter Milton?’

‘I don’t know.’ I liked the way she said ‘we’, as though we were colleagues working on a joint assignment. ‘I want to try and find out a bit more in case we are heading in the right direction.’

‘Have you spoken to anyone else?’ She was making notes as she was talking. ‘Did you manage to get in touch with his mother?’

‘No. I was right, she’s dead.’

Tash nodded. ‘OK. Any other family still around that you know of?’

‘Maybe his sisters. Or, you know, maybe brothers, who knows?’

‘Yeah.’ She was nodding slowly. I couldn’t tell if the raise of one eyebrow was her trying to be languidly charming or because it was so painfully obvious that I was lying. Or at least avoiding the truth. ‘Yeah, you should look into that. Check the electoral roll and whatever.’

‘Right.’ I nodded. ‘I will do. So, do you think you could find me any more stuff about Edgarsbridge?’

She stuck out her bottom lip. It was an oddly sexy mannerism she had. Or maybe it was that I was beginning to find everything about her oddly sexy. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I would have thought so. I’m not sure what exactly, but I’ll have a dig around and see what I can find.’

I smiled. ‘Excellent.’

‘OK, then.’ She looked up at me, one eyebrow raised again. Languidly charming, I decided. ‘Don’t tell anyone though – they’re very strict about us not doing people’s research for them.’

‘They’d rather you were watching cricket on the internet?’

‘No, they’d rather I actually got some work done, but they can’t have everything.’

I smiled. When was the last time I met a woman like this? One who made me laugh on purpose, rather than because I suddenly realised how comically mismatched we were.

‘So, when do you need this by?’

I took a breath. ‘How about tomorrow night? Seven o’clock outside again?’

She nodded with what appeared to be genuine enthusiasm. ‘OK. I’ll look forward to it.’

‘Me too. Especially if you wear that short skirt again.’

This time she raised both eyebrows. ‘OK,’ she said slowly. ‘See you then.’

I cringed to myself as I walked back to the door. If only she were ugly and boring, I would have slept with her by now.

Chapter 4 Tash

I stayed late at work that night, waiting to meet Ed. It was something I had started doing occasionally anyway. It made me look keen in front of the bosses, plus it delayed the awful moment of returning to Mum and Dad’s house. It was better than it had been, being back there without them, but only in the same way that acute appendicitis is better than a ruptured spleen.

The first few weeks I felt as though an evil set-designer had arranged things to be as poignant and painful as possible. The calendar marked with appointments and arrangements for months to come. A half-finished crossword on the side table with a pair of reading glasses folded on top. Unwashed plates by the sink, a load of wet laundry still in the machine, books with bookmarks twenty pages from the end. They’re never coming back, everything screamed at me, and they didn’t even know it.

At the beginning I’d needed all the stomach-clawing reminders every five paces: I didn’t want to run the risk of forgetting, even for a millisecond, and having to face remembering all over again. But slowly, the knowledge became absorbed in every part of me. I was a person whose parents were dead. I was an orphan. I couldn’t forget it, any more than I could forget about being absurdly tall, or being shortsighted, or being a librarian. So I’d tidied the worst of it away after six weeks or so, once I started washing again, and even, occasionally, eating. I went out and bought a brand new duvet set with a comforting, old-fashioned pattern of pink and turquoise roses. It was a woman’s duvet set, I decided, a duvet set that made no concessions to masculine sensibilities. I put it on the bed in my old room upstairs and I started going to bed there every night. Some nights I even slept.

But still, I was happier – well, not happier, but less miserable – when I wasn’t in the house. I generally went round to Geri’s straight from work but on the rare occasion she was busy or the more common occasion when I felt I ought to give her a break, I would stay at work a bit longer, reading the papers and surfing the internet until I felt tired enough to leave.

That night, though, I was genuinely absorbed in work, ferreting away for Ed’s Pete Milton mystery. Even if I had been a real person with a normal life I might have stayed late that night. I felt enthused, like I used to when I’d been doing what I still thought of as ‘my’ job at the Sentinel. I couldn’t give a shit about history, local or otherwise, and I was finding it increasingly hard to even fake an interest in some middle-aged woman’s family tree and whether her great-uncle was christened John but known as James or vice versa. But helping a journalist research a story, gathering the facts in order to get to the heart of the matter – that was what I did. Doing it again made me feel that my old self and my old life had not entirely disappeared. Maybe, one day in the distant future, this could be me again.

‘Hello, Tash.’

The woman’s voice behind me made me jump, and, as I recognised the blustering, over-friendly tones, I allowed myself a small grimace before turning round. Dolly Cheswold, the queen of the family history nutters, and the nuttiest of them all by a very long chalk. And believe me, she had some stiff competition on that score.

‘Hi Dolly.’ I forced a smile, sneaking an anxious glance at the clock. It was twenty to seven. My shift had technically finished at six, but the library didn’t shut until eight, and now Dolly knew I was here I risked being stuck with her for as long as she could carry on talking, which was usually an extremely long time. ‘Back again? I didn’t know there was a meeting tonight.’ Dolly ran the family history group, Who Does Doncaster Think You Are?, out of one of the library meeting rooms. I dreaded their weekly meetings because they never washed up their coffee cups, and someone, usually me, had to wait around to lock up and make sure they actually left the building and didn’t camp out behind the microfiche, so deep was their obsession.

‘Oh no, not tonight unfortunately. I’m just here to help out a friend.’ She gestured to a tall, fashionably dressed middle-aged woman hovering a few metres away from my desk.

The woman gave an apologetic half-smile. ‘Yes, I’m a family history virgin, I’m afraid. Dolly’s been kind enough to offer some of her expertise.’

‘Right,’ I said with a professional smile, trying to hide my surprise that this woman could be a friend of Dolly’s. She looked so normal.

‘Yes,’ Dolly butted in, ‘Jenny here – ’ she gestured again at the woman, ‘ – is my husband’s cousin’s widow.’ I nodded, trying to look engrossed. ‘She fancies finding out a bit about family history now she’s got all this time on her hands with no man to run round after, ha ha!’ Dolly always laughed too much and too long at things that weren’t funny. Such as the loneliness and crisis of identity that often accompany a bereavement. Jenny smiled diffidently again and I felt as though I should apologise for Dolly, for being associated with her in any capacity at all.

‘Great,’ I said, unconvincingly, to Jenny. ‘Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place. Have you thought about what you want to find out? Which branches of the family you’re interested in, how in-depth you want to go with it all?’

‘Erm…’ Jenny shook her head and shrugged. ‘Like I said, I’m a bit of a beginner.’

I tried to smile reassuringly and look as though I wasn’t just focusing on the fact that I wanted to be sure to have time to go to the toilet and brush my teeth before I had to meet Ed. ‘Do you have any information so far to start you off?’

She shook her head again. She looked as though she was regretting this whole thing and I wondered if Dolly, in her search for a new project, had bullied her into it.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘it’s a bit overwhelming just trying to work out where to start, there’s so much information out there.’

‘That’s where Tash comes in,’ Dolly put in proudly. ‘The staff here are wonderful; such a great help to us.’ Yes, I thought, cleaning up after you every week, listening to you wittering on for hours at a time. Such a great help.

‘Why don’t you take these,’ I said to Jenny, handing her a pile of leaflets. ‘They tell you what we can search for, how much it costs, but – you know, I hope Dolly hasn’t given you the wrong impression, we don’t actually do the research for you, you have to do it yourself.’ I tried to push the file of research I had spent the last couple of hours working on for Ed out of her line of vision. ‘You know, we’re really not allowed to, we just don’t have the time.’

‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘of course. Well, that’s the fun part, surely, the research?’

If you say so. ‘Well,’ I said with a not-very-surreptitious glance at the clock, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you in Dolly’s capable hands. Christine’s next door in the lending section, she’ll be popping in and out if you need anything. I’m afraid I’ll have to dash off, I’m meeting someone.’ As soon as I uttered the last sentence I realised my mistake, but it was too late.

‘Oh! Oh Tash, “meeting someone”? Oh how lovely!’ Dolly had somehow cobbled together the impression that I was a sort of cross between Bridget Jones and Miss Jean Brodie – a single woman, soon to be past her prime, both desperate for a man and yet totally fulfilled by my wonderfully absorbing work. ‘A young man, is it?’ And then, ‘Oh it’s not that nice young man we saw waiting outside, do you think? Is it Tash? Is he lovely and tall with a great head of hair and beautiful teeth?’

I cast about for something to say. The most I had noticed thus far about Ed’s teeth was that he had them all. ‘Um…’

‘Oh, well, if it is, then bloody good for you, Tash! Oh, well done indeed. It’s not often, is it, that a single woman of your age is lucky enough to find a wonderful specimen like him? Oh, and such a pleasant manner. I do believe that if young men still wore hats he would have doffed his at us, wouldn’t he, Jenny?’

It was then that I realised that she must indeed be talking about Ed. And I was surprised to notice that, though Dolly Cheswold was undoubtedly Doncaster’s biggest and busiest pain in the arse, she was, for once, right about something. I did feel lucky.

*

He was waiting for me, just as before, with his dark, 1990s trench coat and his shaggy hair, yet still, somehow, looking like a film star. Same time, I thought, same place. Same clothes. It was close to becoming a routine, and I was surprised by how much I liked that idea.

‘I’m afraid I didn’t find all that much,’ I told him, after we had sat down. We had gone to Dove again, neither of us having a clue as to where else might be half-decent in Doncaster these days. ‘Edgarsbridge was one of the more productive pits in Yorkshire during the strike, but it’s all relative and you’re talking about starting from a pretty low base. Ninety-seven percent of the miners in Yorkshire came out on strike – probably more round here – so yes, maybe more went back to Edgarsbridge than some of the other pits but you’d still only be talking about a handful of men. The one interesting thing about those personnel files is that the other blokes who went back were all employed at that pit before the strike and after, in a lot of cases. This Peter Milton – the mystery man – he was the only one who just worked there for those few months. Now – ’ I leaned back in my chair, feeling like Hercule Poirot, ‘I don’t want to tell you how to do your job but, you know, Milton’s not an especially common name. Say this Peter Milton – yours, ours – say he needed, or wanted, to go back to work for whatever reason. He probably couldn’t risk doing it over at Oldfield where people might see him, where word might get out. But if he was desperate enough to go back in the first place he might have been desperate enough to do it over in Rotherham. Plus, he was taken off their books a few weeks after our Peter Milton disappeared. I know that the strike was pretty much over by then anyway but… What?’

Ed was paler behind his freckly tan and he looked slightly sick.

‘What?’ I said again.

‘Nothing. So – you think it’s definitely the same Pete Milton?’

I shrugged. ‘Anyone can change a date of birth. Remember, it was way before the days of ID fraud and money laundering paranoia. He wouldn’t even have had to give them bank details.’

He nodded, still looking sick. ‘There’s something I should tell you.’

I could tell he hadn’t been properly listening to me. He had that look that men get when they wish you would hurry up and finish talking so that they can blurt out the thing that’s been bothering them the whole time they’ve been pretending to pay attention.

‘I am a journalist, that’s all true.’ He said it as though his being a journalist was the thing that had made me like him so far. ‘But – I’m not working on a story. Or at least, not just any story. I’m – Pete Milton is – was, whatever – The thing is, I’m his brother.’

‘Right.’ I blinked. Seemed as if it was family history research of a kind, after all. ‘Shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know,’ I said needlessly. ‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have been so blunt.’

Ed shook his head. ‘You weren’t – you haven’t been. Don’t be sorry.’

‘I meant – ’ I blurted, then stopped.

‘What?’

I remembered what he’d said to me when he found out about Mum and Dad, and how grateful I had been to him. ‘I meant I’m sorry for you,’ I said. ‘Him being gone so long, not knowing. It must have been terrible for you.’ I wasn’t asking, it was a statement of fact. When he’d asked me about Mum and Dad, about how I managed to carry on, I’d had the feeling then that he knew already that I was just a moving, talking shell, that in some ways he was one too.

He was silent a minute. ‘I know everybody says that the not knowing that’s what everybody thinks is the worst, but I’m not sure. What about you? What would you choose? Not knowing, maybe never knowing, whether your parents were alive, or, well…being where you are now? Knowing.’

Tears sprang into my eyes. I looked down, hoping the light was dim enough that he wouldn’t notice. Ed did not seem like the kind of man who would be attracted to, or wish to exploit, a damaged woman, nor was I the type of woman who would wish to appear damaged. Although, seeing as I was crying in front of him for the second time in as many meetings, it was probably already too late.

He had been the first person to speak about my loss with such honesty, and I wanted to respond in kind. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I mean, I know – ’ I swallowed. ‘I know that they’re gone, even if I don’t know where they’ve gone to.’ I tried to laugh and he smiled in sympathy. ‘But – Oh, Ed, there’s no good way of saying this. What I mean is, I do know that they didn’t choose to go. I wish – I wish so much that there was any possibility they might still be alive, and if the reason I didn’t know they were still alive was that they weren’t able to tell me, then it would be OK. But – I can’t imagine a way that that could be true.’ He was staring at me levelly, his mouth set in a flat line. ‘Can you?’

He shook his head. ‘No. No, you’re right. If Pete’s dead, then he’s dead and that’s terrible. If he’s alive then, obviously, that’s better, but – but, you know… Why?’ He lifted a hand as though he wanted to smash it heavily on the table, but he brought it back down slowly and tapped it once. ‘Why?’ His voice was flat, emotionless but his hand, I noticed, was shaking very slightly.

‘Christ,’ I said, ‘what a pair of tragic life stories.’

He smiled, picking up on my need to break the dark mood. ‘Maybe we should co-author a misery memoir?’

‘Yes.’ I was glad of an excuse to lighten the conversation. ‘Or we could just cut the crap and go straight to Take a Break magazine. I reckon “Disappearing Miner Left Hole in the Coalface of My Life” must be worth at least five-hundred quid. I might even net a couple of hundred for “Divorced and Orphaned in the Same Week”.’

He smiled again, but this time it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘So, you told me what happened with your mum and dad. And … you did say you’d tell me what happened with your husband too if I wanted you to.’

Oh shit. ‘Do you want me to?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Very, very much. You’re starting to intrigue me here, Tash. I’d like to know more about you and, don’t worry, there’s not much you could say that would make me like you any less.’

That’s what you think. ‘I slept with his best mate.’ He was being so charming, so heart-tremblingly intense and interested and perfect. I wanted to put a stop to it now, before it went any further. And telling the truth seemed a pretty effective way of doing that.

There was a second or two when his face was fixed, unreadable, then I could see him begin to shut down and withdraw. So quickly and with just a few monosyllabic words, I had drained all the warmth from him.

‘So,’ I shrugged, determined to brazen it out. I would scare him off if it killed me. ‘There you have it. Pretty good grounds for divorce, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Well,’ he said slowly, as though he was trying to buy time in which to find the right words. ‘I suppose that depends on what exactly happened.’ There was a moment’s silence, the classic interview technique of trying to get your subject to give away more of themselves than they intended. ‘But, no,’ he continued. ‘Don’t tell me if you don’t want to. Jesus, we’ve only just met, I’m pretty sure none of this is any of my business.’

I swilled the wine around my glass, watching it slop about, the dregs sticking to the sides of the thick, artisan glass. Suddenly every part of me ached with fatigue. The blood travelling through my body felt slow and sticky, the breath in my lungs was heavy and cloudy. My skin ached with the effort of holding my body together. What the hell was I doing here, in this calm, homely bar with this sweet, handsome man? Why was I allowing myself to do things like this, to come to nice places, to meet nice people? I wasn’t supposed to like it here, I wasn’t supposed to enjoy it, I wasn’t supposed to be happy. Soon I would be back in London, soon Tim would be home and I had to be back there so that he knew where to find me. I was going back soon, that was the plan. I would go back to the place where I truly belonged and stop living out somebody else’s life in this slow, provincial nowhere that I kept on telling myself was no longer home.

I sighed heavily, too tired to stop myself. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I probably shouldn’t tell you. Not because it’s none of your business, but because I don’t have many friends up here and I can’t afford to lose any potential ones.’ I forced a smile. ‘I’m probably going to be stuck living here for a little longer while I sort out all of Mum and Dad’s estate. I don’t want to alienate you by going into the details of what a heartless bitch I really am.’

The tone I had been aiming for was light-hearted and self-deprecating, but I think what came out was probably more world-weary and self-hating. He raised his eyebrows in surprise, then smiled. ‘I know we haven’t known each other long, and despite what you say, I know none of this is any of my business, but you don’t seem like a heartless bitch to me. If what you say is really how it happened, then I’m sure you had your reasons.’

Did I? I wondered. Did I have my reasons? I had excuses, if that counted. And yes, maybe I had made things sound a little bit worse than they really had been. But let’s face it, what I had done was bad enough. Ed deserved to know that I was not the kind of woman he deserved.

I smiled at Ed now, determined to draw this part of the conversation to a close. I was so tired of it all: tired of thinking about it, tired of talking about it, tired of the person it had made me into. ‘Well, maybe I had reasons. I’m sure I did. I’m just not sure if they were good enough reasons.’

‘So,’ he said, attempting to make his tone light-hearted, ‘I guess things with your husband are definitely…’

He was asking what my circumstances were, I realised. Was I still hung up on Stephen? Was Stephen still hung up on me? Was there untold unfinished business and dirty laundry just waiting to be aired, were he to make the mistake of getting involved?

I shook my head. ‘It’s over.’ I laughed, humourlessly. ‘Well, you can’t blame him, can you? Forgiveness would be rather a lot to ask after that, wouldn’t you say? Even from someone like Stephen.’

‘He’s a good guy then?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, he’s a good guy. I should never have married him.’ I shook my head. It really was time to change the subject. Maybe I was trying to be upfront with Ed so that he knew that I wasn’t interested in any romantic funny business with him, but I was worried that I was in danger of coming across as one of those people who wallow constantly in self-pity as a way of mining compliments from the other person. ‘So anyway, we’ve established that neither of us wants to talk about my horrendous personal life. Now let’s try yours. Why didn’t you tell me you were Peter Milton’s brother?’

‘It’s Pete,’ he said, unsmiling. ‘Everyone called him Pete. The only ones who didn’t were Mum and Dad.’ ‘And they’re both gone now’, remained unspoken.

‘OK, then why didn’t you tell me you were Pete Milton’s brother?’

‘So you would take me seriously,’ he said. I rolled my eyes at him, even though I knew that if he had come to my desk with this query and told me it was about a member of his family I would have filed him with Dolly’s Who Do You Think You Are? nuts and hardly given him the time of day. ‘And also – ’ he spread his hands ‘ – I’m not ashamed of who I am, I’m not. Or where I come from. And I hate to admit it, but – I didn’t want you to know that I was from Oldfield, or that my family were miners, or that my brother was that guy who went missing among all sorts of dirty rumours.’ I opened my mouth to protest. ‘Remember,’ he said, gently mocking, ‘you are very London.’

I faked a frown. ‘I am not London, we’ve been through this. I grew up here too. I remember the strike, I remember what went on.’

‘Yes, sure, but – well, what did your mum and dad do?’

That past tense never failed to sting. I would never get used to it. ‘They were teachers. Then when they retired they bought a shop – do you know Apple Tree Books? The one with the café?’ He nodded. ‘That was theirs. But – ’ I could see him about to say something else ‘ – I know what you’re thinking, what does this middle class girl know about being from a pit community? And I don’t know anything really, you’re right. But I think I might understand a bit. Mum and Dad – Mum especially – they got really involved during the strike. They even went down to the picket lines a few times. And they were heavily into the welfare side of it. They used to bring food, cook food, donate clothes and stuff. Not in a Lady Bountiful kind of way, just – she cared, she wanted to help, she thought it was the right thing to do. Believe me, I couldn’t care less where you’re from.’

His eyes narrowed affectionately and the whole of the middle of my body felt warm once that smile hit his lips. ‘I can tell that now,’ he said, smiling, and my stomach heaved with something close to pleasure.

Chapter 5 Ed

Tash finished her glass of wine and went to the toilet while she waited for the next one, allowing me time to mull things over. It was going well, I decided. All this intimacy and soul baring, this sharing of our pasts, was, in my experience, a good sign on a second date. These were dates weren’t they? Were they?

Later I walked her to the taxi rank and when a taxi arrived and I ushered her into it I thought about kissing her goodnight – you know, properly, on the lips and everything – but it seemed I must have thought about it for too long because the next thing I knew, she was manoeuvring herself into her seat while giving me a hasty peck at the top of my cheek, near my ear, the way you might to an old school friend you’d run into by chance. And then she was gone before we could arrange to meet again.

Despite this, I was sure this time, with a confidence I never normally felt, that if I were to ask to see her again, she would say yes. I was glad I’d told her about Pete and Mum and Dad. Not that I’d planned it, not that I’d wanted to use them in that way, but I think it had been something – albeit something miserable – that we could hold in common, that put us both on the same team.

So I waited the obligatory couple of days then texted her to see if she wanted to go out again. I had wanted to go into the library and ask her in person – because I wanted to see her as soon as I could, to get another look at her, hear her voice again – but I held back. Texting would give out a stronger message, I decided, prove that this wasn’t only to do with work, that it could also be a purely social – purely romantic? – relationship.

After the fumbled non-kiss on the cheek, I was becoming increasingly, uncomfortably aware of our lack of physical contact so far, other than an arm round her or a brief holding of hands during emotionally charged conversations. Before things progressed too far towards the cul-de-sac of Just Good Friends, I decided to make my intentions clear by suggesting a meal at one of Doncaster’s few fancy restaurants and by arranging it for a Saturday night. Saturday nights were about couples and exclusivity, they were a precious resource you only spent with someone you valued. ‘I really, really like you’, I wanted to say. ‘This is special treatment. I haven’t put this much thought into taking a woman out for several years – possibly ever.’ The idea was to stop short of saying, ‘Please like me too, I’m desperate’.

She said yes, to my intense relief – replied almost straight away, in fact – and I spent most of the week looking forward to Saturday with agitated excitement. I dithered for a while over what to wear – something of a pointless exercise as the only constituents of my current wardrobe that were suitable for Doncaster in early summer were two shirts, two light jumpers (one of which had a hole under the armpit, one of which had gone an odd purple colour in the wash), a pair of jeans and a pair of combat trousers that had been left in my flat in Dubai by a previous tenant, and which I had adopted when an old pair wore out. I got my hair cut. I had a proper wet shave. I bought condoms – I knew that I was tempting fate, but if and when my chance came, I wanted to be able to capitalise on it straight away.

I got to the restaurant early, just in case. Tash struck me as the sort of person who liked to be on time for things, and I didn’t want to risk keeping her waiting. I was right, kind of. She turned up at four minutes past eight; just late enough to prevent her looking unattractively keen, not late enough to be rude. She had, I decided, probably walked round the block a few times to make sure she wasn’t early.

The restaurant was perfect, all heavy linens and artful table centres and barely audible mood music. This, as I had hoped, was very obviously a place you brought someone you wanted to have sex with. Tash looked beautiful, tall and lovely in a black dress with a red scarf and red cardigan and red lipstick. It was, I realised, the first time I’d seen her wearing make-up. My heart thumped in anticipation as I realised that she was making an effort too. Hopefully this night would end the way we both seemed to want it to.

‘So how are things going in your search for the long lost brother?’ she asked me after the waiter had brought our bottle of Chianti.

I felt slightly deflated. I had wanted to try and find some alternative topic of conversation, some way of drawing her closer and finding out more about what was behind the scary spectacles and the teenage-goth pallor. ‘Not so bad, I suppose. I’ve been through all that stuff you gave me – which has been great, by the way – ’ She smiled and my heart jumped so much it made me cough ‘ – but not much new has come up since then. I’m going to try and talk to a few more people – you know, friends, neighbours – to see if I can throw any light on this Edgarsbridge stuff.’

She nodded. ‘So you think it’s true then? That he was working during the strike?’

I shrugged. ‘I think it’s the most likely explanation, don’t you? I’m going to assume it’s true until I can find evidence that indicates otherwise.’ I sounded, I was pleased to note, smooth and professional. It was true, I did think it was the most likely explanation. Unfortunately, if it were true, then it threw up a hundred million new questions, none of which I knew how to answer. Nor did it chime with the treasured ideal I had held all these years of my brother as a flawless, blameless hero.

‘So – ’ Her face was questioning. ‘How do you feel about that?’

‘About what?’

‘About, you know, him being a scab.’

I narrowed my eyes. It was an emotive choice of words. ‘I don’t know,’ I said truthfully. ‘But I do know that, if it was true, then he must have had a good reason. Pete would never have done that without a good reason.’

Tash frowned. ‘How good a reason can it have been? He was single, he had no kids, no mortgage, no rent even.’

‘He paid the rent,’ I protested. ‘He chipped in: him, Mum and Leanne, they all shared it. Me and Lisa were still at school. Anyway, what is this? I thought I was meant to be the journalist here. I’m used to being the one asking the uncomfortable questions.’ I tried a laugh and so did she but I think we both knew our hearts weren’t in it.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be awkward. And yes, I didn’t know your brother at all. I just meant, you know, he didn’t have a family to support, he didn’t have many overheads. Some people, I suppose, you could just about understand them going back, but – ’ She became aware of the look on my face and she squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Look, Ed, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that your brother was, I don’t know, taking the easy way out, I just – ’

‘What did you mean,’ I said coldly, ‘when you said you could “just about” understand some people going back.’

She leaned back in her chair, away from me. Suddenly the quiet of the restaurant became oppressive and I wondered if the other diners were listening to our conversation. ‘Well,’ she said steadily, as though consciously regulating her tone, ‘I guess I meant that some things are wrong, and we all know they’re wrong, but people sometimes do them anyway, and sometimes there are understandable reasons for that.’

‘So you’re comparing going to work to feed your family with something like robbing a bank, is that what you’re saying?’

She winced. ‘No, no, that isn’t what I’m saying, not at all. I just meant that – I don’t know what I meant.’ She fell silent a moment, swirling the black-red wine around her glass. Then, as I was about to speak, she said, ‘No, what I meant was, that they did a lot of harm, the people who went back, they undermined what everyone else was fighting for. And I think that, unless you had a good reason for it, then it’s pretty hard to justify.’

‘To justify? Justify to whom? To you? You and your middle-class, idealistic family? To Scargill and his gang of nutters? Look, my brother went out on strike for that whole year, and I saw firsthand how hard it was. No money, no prospect of another job, no future. But there were others on our estate and round the village, families where someone had gone back – they had to, they had kids, they had lives. They had to. And it was just as hard for them – other people in the village made sure it was. It was a whole generation ago and there’s people who still won’t speak to them, who spit on the pavement when they go past. I don’t know how you can say it was the easy option.’ I was aware that my voice was significantly louder than when I had started speaking. I wanted to make some conciliatory gesture, to show that I wasn’t angry really, that this was just a theoretical debate, that I’d still very much like to go home with her tonight, please, if she wouldn’t mind. But the trouble was, I was angry, and I know it must have shown in my face.

Tash shook her head, trying to be the conciliatory one. ‘Look,’ she said, her tone flat. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this any more. It’s like you said, it was a long time ago, but it’s still a topic probably best avoided in polite company. Why don’t you tell me more about Dubai? It’s somewhere I’ve never been.’

So I did. I told her about the footballers and champagne bars and mile-high, half-finished buildings, built by men from Bangladesh who slept twelve to a room and couldn’t afford proper shoes. I told her about shops full of gold, and sports cars being sold for half their true value because their owners had gone bankrupt and were having to go back to the UK, cap-in-hand. But the spell, if it had existed, was broken. She laughed at my jokes, and asked intelligent questions, and she acted for the rest of the evening as though our disagreement had not happened, but I think we both had a slightly sour taste in our mouths when we left the restaurant.

I offered to walk her home, still holding out a faint hope, but she dismissed the offer as though I hadn’t really meant it, and walked off in the opposite direction to me, with a wave over her shoulder and a ‘See you later’.

My mood was not improved by the walk into town past drunken schoolchildren and stinking kebab shops, nor by the half-hour wait for the bus back to Leanne’s. When I got in, Lisa was there, drinking tea and watching TV.

‘Where’s Leanne?’ I asked.

‘Outside,’ Lisa said, with a jerk of her head. ‘Having a fag.’

I really wanted to go up to bed and be alone, but I don’t get to see Lisa very often – largely because I make little effort to do so – and I felt as if I ought to at least pass the time of day with her now, so I sat down. It’s not that Lisa and I don’t get on but I’m just not close with her, not like I am with Leanne. Lisa and I are similar: slim, quiet, self-contained, sandy-haired and fair-skinned. We take after our dad. Leanne and Pete are short, dark and dominate every room and every conversation, whether they intend to or not, the same as Mum used to. Lisa and I tend to rely on Leanne to bring out the more relaxed, life-loving side of ourselves. When it’s just the two of us, the conversation is usually either awkwardly stilted, or it’s non-existent.

‘So, Leanne says you’re still going on about our Pete.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘I’m not “going on about” him. I’m doing some research. I’m trying to find him.’ Her tone hadn’t been overtly hostile, not like Leanne’s the other day, but I could tell she too was unconvinced that my whole project was a good idea.

‘I know,’ she said, looking me in the eye – something, I realised, she rarely did. ‘But why? What do you think you’re going to find out that nobody else has found out these last twenty year?’

I was silent a moment. ‘That’s what Leanne said, too. But I just want to try, you know?’

‘What, a last ditch effort?’

I shrugged. ‘Something like that.’ I rubbed my hands down my face, searching for a way to explain why I was doing what I was doing. ‘I mean, twenty years is a long time. People will have forgotten about it or at least stopped thinking about it as much. If I can do something to stir it up a bit, even if that just means writing a little piece for the Donny Free Press then it might help us find him. Don’t you think?’

‘Who, though? Whose memory are you trying to jog? Everyone who ever met him?’

‘Well, yeah. Why not? I mean even you and Leanne, I know you both still think about him all the time, same as I do, but people bury things, put them away, choose not to look at them. We all do it. And, you know, by us talking about it, even just this here, tonight, maybe that’ll make one of us think twice about something that happened back then, maybe some pieces will fall into place that never have before.’

Lisa was still looking me in the eye, and the coolness of her stare unnerved me. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or sad, or simply uninterested. ‘Maybe,’ she said quietly. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

Leanne came into the room through the back kitchen, trailing chilly evening air and stale cigarette smoke. ‘Good night?’ she asked me, barely suppressing a wink.

Lisa grinned, the coolness of our conversation instantly thawed by Leanne’s presence, both of them sensing yet another opportunity to gang up on me. ‘Yeah, hot date wasn’t it?’

I pursed my lips. I wasn’t ready for this. ‘No, we’re just – ’

‘What?’ Leanne interrupted. ‘Don’t tell me the sexy librarian was too buttoned up to put out, even after three dates. You’re losing your touch, bro.’

‘It’s not that,’ I protested. ‘I just don’t want to sit around here discussing it with you two like some bad episode of Loose Women.’

Lisa laughed, though whether with me or at me, I wasn’t sure.

‘Where are you going?’ Leanne barked at me as I stood up.

‘To bed.’

‘Wait, I want to ask you something first.’ She was either insensible to my mood, or it was something really important.

I sighed. ‘What?’

Leanne glanced sideways at Lisa, who gave a subtle nod. ‘Are you doing anything tomorrow night?’

‘No.’ I squinted quizzically at the pair of them. ‘I’m never doing anything.’

‘I thought you might be out with that library woman again.’

‘Her name’s Tash. And no, I’m not out with her tomorrow.’ The way things went tonight, I wouldn’t be going out with her ever again.

‘So, do you want to come out with me?’

For a moment, I was too shocked to speak. I was the dorky younger brother. I had longed to be invited along to places by Pete or Leanne – even by Lisa – when they were all well-dressed, sophisticated teenagers and I was a pathetic swotty bookworm who couldn’t even ride a bike, but the invitations had never materialised. Here one was being proffered on a plate, and I was naturally wary. It had to be a trap.

‘Where?’ My suspicion was well-founded. I could not recall a night out with Leanne that had not involved biker pubs, hairy rock bands, maximum strength cider and someone making me look at their new tattoo.

‘Round the town, just with me and a few of the girls. You said yourself, you’re always stuck in the house, you should get out more.’

I narrowed my eyes. ‘Are you trying to – ’

‘Look,’ she cut in, holding up a hand, ‘I’m not trying to set you up with anyone, it’s just there’s this girl I know from work, Helen. She manages one of the care homes, she’s single and I reckon she’d be your type.’

‘My type?’ I tried to keep my face neutral but must have failed.

‘Don’t worry,’ Leanne said mockingly, ‘she’s nothing like me.’ I opened my mouth to speak. ‘Or like any of my other mates either. She’s nice. Honestly, I think you’d like her.’ She looked to Lisa for backup.

‘She is,’ Lisa said, nodding earnestly. ‘I’ve met her. She’s dead normal. Honest.’

‘And how do you know I’m even looking for a girlfriend?’

‘Why wouldn’t you be?’ Leanne snorted. ‘You just said, nothing’s happening with this librarian woman and you told me she’s not even divorced yet. Anyway, when was the last time you had a girlfriend? You can’t tell me you’re not getting a bit desperate.’

‘I had a girlfriend in Dubai,’ I protested, which was true after a fashion. I’d had an ongoing understanding with Jen, one of the other journalists on my magazine that whenever we were drunk, bored or horny – or, more usually, all three – we would meet up on some pretext then, pretending we had never intended such an unseemly outcome, have a quick and uncomplicated shag. I had liked Jen, in a slightly awe-struck way. She had seemed impossibly posh to me – albeit posh in what politicians would call a middle-class way. She was like someone from a university prospectus or a youth TV presenter, all unkempt hair and board shorts and oversized hoodies, spending her whole life looking perfect, as if she had just got out of bed, only she smelled sweet and clean, and she was always wearing eye make-up. She was by far the best-looking woman I had ever been involved with, but she was nearly ten years younger than me and more interested in wallowing in the boozy ex-pat lifestyle than in any kind of serious relationship. We had slept together the night before we both returned to England and exchanged email addresses out of a sense of duty, but neither of us had initiated contact in the months since.

‘Yes, well,’ said Leanne, ‘maybe you did.’ She clearly wasn’t sure she believed me. ‘But you obviously don’t any more. So come with me, see if you like Helen. What have you got to lose? Worst that’ll happen is you’ll have a night out in Donny.’

‘Yeah,’ I muttered. ‘Well, that’s bad enough, isn’t it?’

Leanne tutted. ‘You’re like an old man. It’s better than sitting here, isn’t it? Watching bloody Question Time or whatever it is you insist on putting on.’

Lisa nodded. ‘She’s right, Ed. You may as well live a little.’

I sighed. ‘All right. OK. Why not?’ They exchanged a triumphant glance. ‘Can I go to bed now?’

Chapter 6 Tash

I didn’t contact Ed the week after the date, but I thought about him a lot, growing ever more dejected as I did so. For one mad moment when I had first walked in and sat down, as I took in the restaurant, and the wine, and the candles, all of it pointing to only one thing, I had had that thought again, the same as I had had when I said goodbye to him after the first time we went out. I thought, God, you know, I could. I could go home with him, or bring him home with me. I could have good old-fashioned bouncy, fun sex with a man who wasn’t Tim or Stephen and none of this other awful shit that ruined my life would have to matter any more. My heart had beat harder and there had been a tremor in my fingers and I had been really, really glad I’d put lipstick on. And it was just such a come-down, such a pathetic waste of heavy sexual tension and posh cloth napkins that we had ended up pompously bickering like a couple of undergraduate tutorial partners.

After an obligatory few days of sulking and self-loathing, I became seized by an almost frantic desire to, I don’t know, improve somehow. Improve the situation or improve myself, but improve something. It was the feeling you get after a lost weekend of booze and curries and unnecessary taxis; the urge to clean up, start afresh, and never let things descend to such a state again.

I hadn’t yet sorted out anything of Mum and Dad’s, other than basic tidying and hiding of stuff I found too upsetting to have on permanent view, but the following weekend I began to feel that perhaps I might be capable of it, that, in fact, I had probably reached a point where I needed to do it.

My parents had moved into the house as newly-weds forty years ago and, as far as I could see, had never thrown anything out since. Every one of the house’s eight rooms had cupboards whose contents I had lived my whole life in ignorance of. I hadn’t a clue where to start with tackling this mountain of possessions but I got up on the Saturday morning a week after our date, determined that start I would.

I knew I only had the morning to go at it as Geri had arranged to pick me up after lunch and take me to the park to help her spend an afternoon trying to exhaust her kids, so I began early. I’d been up since five anyway.

I decided to begin with the room that we had always called the dining room, despite it being more of a study. The family did all their eating at the large kitchen table. The dining room was lined with bookshelves from waist-level and above, with wooden built-in cupboards rising to meet them from floor level. I ignored the books. They were at once too easy and too difficult to deal with at a time when I was feeling so purposeful. I concentrated on the cupboards, starting with the one next to the French windows and working round them methodically.

The first cupboard was filled with a whole lot of nothing very much: comically dated 1970s crockery and tableware, half-empty boxes of Christmas crackers, a huge packet of paper doilies that I couldn’t imagine my mum ever having any use for. Still I found myself floundering in the face of so much of it. I emptied the contents of the cupboard onto the floor, then sat and looked at it for about twenty minutes. What was I expected to do now? What would they have wanted me to do with all this stuff? Keep it as a memento? Sell it? Take it to the charity shop? Take it to the tip? This particular pile held little sentimental value for me – indeed, I had no recollection of ever seeing most of it before – but still I did not feel I could just chuck it out. Some of it might be saleable in a kitsch, retro kind of way. Was I supposed to put it on eBay myself and donate the profits to Mum and Dad’s charity of choice – several had received generous bequests in their will – or should I take it down to a charity shop and let them sell it, even if it was for a charity that might not have been top of their list? Unable to make a decision, I divided the stuff into two piles: bin and sell. I put the ‘sell’ stuff back in the cupboard and moved on to the drawer above it.

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